My parents told me that China would be a cool, interesting place to visit in order to learn more about my background. They said that I could see what life was like when they were growing up. They said that I could try new experiences. They said I could be rejuvenated from my boring life in America.

Stepping out of the cold airport into the muggy, misty air of the street, I glanced at my friend, eager to see his reaction as we stepped into a completely new world. I said to him “Wow, look how different the street looks compared to America!”
He replied, “Yeah, I wonder what life would be like if we lived here.”

As we walked around, not comprehending the writing on the shops’ signs, we entered the nearest restaurant for dinner.
The server seated us quickly at a table next to a few drunken Chinese men. He asked us something in Chinese, which neither my friend nor I could understand, so we had to guess what he asked. We ordered something random off the menu, and while we were eating our meals, the men sitting next to our table started pointing at us and talking amongst themselves. Eventually, one ma got up, and started yelling at us in Chinese. We could not understand a word that he was saying, so when we could not respond to their questions or statements, the men became even angrier. They got up, walked over to me and started pushing me around, itching for a fight. I started trying to edge my way out of this confrontation by scurrying towards the exit, but the men saw my strategy and immediately blocked the exit. They started throwing glasses my friend and me, causing many of the people eating at the other tables to get up and leave the restaurant. Suddenly, the store owner ran out of the kitchen, knife in hand, screaming at the men to evacuate the restaurant immediately.

After the owner finished dealing with the drunken men, he turned to my friend and me, and seemed to apologize. The owner looked like a well-mannered, middle-aged man with nice hair and a cleanly shaven face. He started gesturing towards the kitchen, so we reluctantly followed him, because after all, he did save us from being beaten up. He led us to a backroom with a staircase. We walked up a flight of creaky stairs to a bedroom, and he gestured for us to sit on the bed and relax. A waiter came into the room right after us, carrying all of our suitcases from the flight. He spoke some more Chinese to us, which we still could not understand, and placed blankets, pillows, a tray with two teacups, two saucers, and a teapot onto a desk perpendicular to the bed. He then turned on the television for us, closed the door, and left the room. My friend and I took this notion as an invitation to stay the night for being terrorized on the first day in a new country.
I removed my visual journal from my backpack and started an entry regarding my first night in China. The prompt I picked was, “How do people react to a new environment.”

I asked my friend “How do you think people react when they enter a new environment?”

He said, “I think people try to adapt to their new surroundings while comparing the current environment to their previous one.” I quickly jotted that down and researched online some books regarding this topic. I found out a lot about the neurological aspects of entering a foreign place. I could really relate to the information and was very intrigued by my findings.

The next morning, when my friend and I went downstairs, the store owner greeted and showed us a table set up for two, with a full breakfast ready. We thanked him and started eating like cows since we had barely eaten anything last night. We finished our delicious breakfast and started gathering our bags to leave. I looked back at my visual journal entry from the previous night, remembering how lucky I was to be staying at the owner’s restaurant and to have been rescued from a fight that could have been devastating. When we were ready to leave, we hugged and thanked the store owner for all the hospitality, and set out into the street, with the sun rising in the background and a new mindset of how the people act.